Home & Kitchen Appliance Blog

Before Brangelina, there was Stellian

Subtitled: Eat your heart out, Tomkat.

“What’s a Stellian?” people often ask me. (This is the natural progression from, “Wait, you’re like a WARNER Warner?”)

It’s a good question, seeing as it’s a made up word. It’s not even a real name. I looked up “Stellian” on WhitePages.com one time when I decided I would like to marry someone who could provide a humorous surname hyphenation — he doesn’t exist. (Update: upon redoing this search, I discovered a 68-year-old man by the name of Stellian in Kansas. Wonder if he’s on Facebook…)

And it’s not a fast horse, nor a foreign word — that I know of. Stellian is what’s called a portmanteau.

You might be familiar with portmanteaus from some Stellian imitators, whom I’ll show below:

Brangelina

Bennifer

Tomkat

Speidi

Back in the early ’50s, Steve and Lillian Farkas combined their first names to create Stellian Appliance on Snelling and Larpenteur, where my grandpa Jim Warner would begin working a few years later. Jim Warner bought Stellian in 1971, after years of faithful service, and added his family’s name to the already-established local store (Back then it would’ve been, “What’s a Warner?”).

We still own that location and since have added six more in the time that media covering celebrity supercouples have caught wind of Steve and Lillian’s genius.

I got the question today and I was already on the website with a builder of mine (via phone) and I laughed and we came to this blog. I told him I could just tell him, but this is so much better! I also love the “Are you a Warner Warner” question. Cracks me up!